One Second After

[getsome]

Just finished reading One Second After by William R. Forstchen which was recommended by Wyntrout....WOW this is a really great book and needs to be required reading in this country...It's about what happens in a small North Carolina town after an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) nuke explodes in the high upper atmosphere and destroys the electrical grid and any other electronic device so basically the United States goes from 2011 back to 1800 or so and society falls apart in very short order....It is a sometimes hard to read due to the suffering going on but it really started me thinking about how things would be if it happened...We lived in Charlotte N.C. in 1989 when hurricane Hugo came straight through the city...They said it would weaken to 40 mph winds when it passed but it didn't and the city was hit with 90-100 mph winds and with Charlotte being heavily wooded with pine, huge hardwoods and oaks the winds leveled almost all the trees and they took out all electricity and phone lines as they fell...We were without power for 11 days but at least we had battery powered radio to get news on...I remember ice being the most important item that people needed and seeing a tractor trailer load pulling into a store and people almost rioting to get a bag that was being sold for $15.00...The National Guard finally put a stop to that but I learned many other lessons from this experience, one being to always buy C cell flashlights because you couldnt buy D cell or AA batteries for any amount of money but there were plenty of C cells...Another lesson, don't wait until something happens to try and buy things you should of had on hand such as chain saws, all gone in 1 day...Generators, forget about getting one of those at triple the price...Always keep your vehicle full of gas...no power = no gas...There was one station that had a generator and would pump 1 gal per person only for chain saw use and there were people lined up around the block....Now these are small problems compared to what the people in the book had to deal with and it really hits home how important it is to have firearms and pleanty of ammo on hand when the SHTF...people in the book used ammo to barter with as cash was usless..they would buy a rabbit for twenty .22 shells....Thanks Wyn for telling us about this must read book...Trust me you won't be the same after reading it....

[jeepster09]

Cool, I needed a new book to read, considering winter is never going to end.

[TheTman]

That kind of stuff could really happen they way the terrorists are trying to get a "dirty bomb" and stuff. Pakistan already has nukes, and is a muslim country, what would happen if something like just happened in Egypt were to take place there and unfriendly's took control. Even if they didn't have the missle capacity to send one to the USA, all they'd have to do was sail a ship with a nuke into one of the busy ports and set it off. Imagine one going off at the tip of Manhattan where Wall Street is. That would totally screw our economy. I'm sure the terrorists have thought this through and might be able to pull it off if they got their hands on some nukes.
They for damned sure would nuke Israel and pull the USA into the mess. Iran getting them just scares the hell out of me. Can anyone say WWIII and the world getting bombed back into the dark ages. Very frightening.
I'm hoping the US has plans to get Pakistan's nukes should it ever come to that. But Iran getting them would just FUBAR the world. At least the mid-east and most of Europe.

[wyntrout]

This book is about the "easiest" way to take down our whole country. With 2-3 small nukes launched about 200 miles up, destroy all electronics within the line of sight... at least, blanketing the entire U.S. and some of our allies. A lot of military stuff is hardened against that, but I wouldn't want to test it.

Our B52's were supposed to go into a highly concentrated area of nuclear detonations with lots of EMP, but I always wondered about the plane's avionics surviving. Flying low-level at 200 feet or whatever you could manage , with a closed cockpit environment was going to be pretty hairy... only radar, FLIR, and low-light TV to guide you. The pucker factor would be pretty high and more than a few ejection seat cushions would be sucked up... if you get my drift. :D Flying low level like that protects you from a lot of the EMP and blast effects, but timing is everything.

They called it the SIOP... Single Integrated Operational Plan. Just imagine all of the ICBMs... land and sea, the Bombers, cruise missiles, fighter bombers based in around the theater with one or two nukes.... You have a flight plan when you take off that if executed will keep you from nuking your buddies, flying through any planned NUDETs before you deliver your weapons, and keep you as far as possible from known defenses.
There aren't any targets of opportunity to preclude unintended fratricide... but "stuff" happens and Murphy just loves throwing a wrench into things.

The EMP attack in the book is well within the capability of some of our enemies... small nukes and delivery vehicles capable of getting up to about 200 miles altitude. That's what makes this book so scary... and one of the reasons this book was written!!
It's pretty graphic and it could be a lot worse than depicted in the book.:eek:

Wynn:)

[Smed]

Definately a great read and will make you think for sure and scare the poop out of you, especially when you think of your kids etc.... You can look at New Orleans following Katrina to see how things can fall apart quickly, and that was with them 'knowing" help was coming and getting info / seeing the activity around them. Imagine things being down nationwide and with no info. of whats happening. I think of this book when I hear about Iran or some other country testing their missiles and the press is always presenting the story with the angle that they don't have an intercontinental missle, so they can't reach the US. Well, they don't need to. They use their existing missles and launch from a container ship in the Gulf and they're in business. I sincerely believe if / when they are successful in getting a nuke, this will be the most prefered method (EMP) to try and exude maximum destruction. Some reports indicate that with a successful EMP attack on the US, you could have as much as 80+ % casualties with a year. The EMP itself doesn't kill alot, well, thats relative since it will wipe out all those flying, on life support etc... so a few hundred thousand may die rather suddenly, but the real death toll will take place as society collapses and takes place over many months.

Read the book for sure. I was alway one of those that thought the "end of days" stuff was a bit over the top, but in todays world, I'm coming around to the idea of being prepared. I've had discussions with my brothers on what we would do and where we would meet / go etc... if something like this was to happen. Its a difficult thing to try and figure out. With our society SO dependent on the delivery truck coming next week to fill our stores and dependent on right now news info, just a few days of not knowing whats happening and things can spiral out of control pretty quickly.

[wyntrout]

World War III began in a lot of people's minds in 1978/1979 with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the installation of the Ayotolla Khomeini as the head of a new theocratic state in Iran. Many people thought this was a good thing, but the radical views of Khomeini and his supporters saw a future with Islam as the only religion and Sharia Law for all.
I'm watching Sean Hannity on FOX and tonight's theme is about Iran and the goals of the Islamic theocracy. This is a special about the movie "IRANIUM" which is about this great threat... radical Islamists... willing to commit suicide to further their cause and enter Paradise doing so... with nukes!:eek:
WW III is and has been in progress for a long time. The ultimate goal of the radical Islamists is world domination and they state that goal publicly quite often... that they intend to slowly destroy western civilization and unite the world under one religion. There's nothing peaceful about their intentions.
Damn! They are discussing the EMP attack RIGHT F'ing now... exactly what we were discussing from the book. They are talking 90% casualties... just as in the book. They'll mention the book shortly, I'm sure!

Wynn:(

[krmgator]

The thing that really struck me is how dependent we are on our distribuition system to get our goods and services and how fragile that system is. I have read that if your local grocery store was bought out completely due to an emergency, it would take up to 3 days to completely restock it.

Now multiply that by all the stores you know.

Scary stuff.

[krmgator]

Great book by the way.

[Longitude Zero]

wyntrout that is why one of the later SIOP plans included a "launch on warning". Briefly once they confirmed a Soviet launch with sats they would launch.

The book is an EXCELLENT read and a very realistic view of a possible future. He wrote about an area of the country in which he lives.

Most of our infrastructure is somewhat redundant EXCEPT the electrical grid. Most other factors can be worked around but with no power....

In a recent newspaper article in my area, Islamist's could easily beat us without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. Here is how. Muslim families average 6+ children per couple. In America w/o Hispanic numbers the birthrate runs around 1.3 per couple. In order to maintain a society officials estimate each couple must birth 2.5 kids to maintain their society.

With the addition of the Hispanic births in America the regeneration rate is approximately 3.1 kids per couple. So even with these numbers in a couple of hundred years we will be vastly outnumbered to the point American society as an entity could vanish.

[wyntrout]

That was the key to survivability... improving your position... sitting in the aircraft awaiting instruction or emergency message, taxiing to the hammerhead awaiting instructions, or takeoff and copy messages for instructions.
For a long time at Dyess AFB in the 70's, we had no night exercises, for safety reasons. One night the klaxon went off at 10:30 PM and we hadn't been advised of any changes. We were running for the planes and cursing... thinking this might be the big one! :eek: Thankfully, not.
I'm glad that I missed the Chrome Dome airborne alert. That must have really sucked.

Wynn:D

[Longitude Zero]

My uncles had the "pleasure" of Chrome Dome flights. The crews were not happy about them but there was an excercise they hated even more and that was a No Notice General Curtis LeMay led Operational Readiness Inspection flight.

The klaxon sounded and they flew their missions to the GO/NO GO point. My uncles said those were more grueling than anything eventhough they were shorter than the CD flights you never knew what was going to happen.

Northern tier CD flights were not so bad as the Med flights. The Med CD flights many times lasted over 30 hours in the air. In a B-52 seat that had to suck big time.

[earle8888]

Yep. Chrome Dom or Hard Hat flights were very boring. hour of preflight, 23.5 hours+- flight time, 30min to hour debrief. BUT, with all the TV diners you wanted to check-out before flight and a MicroWave oven at every EJ seat, a chemical toilet , sat over the egress hatch, which was prone to falling of on early models, A,B,C, and during PokerDeck flights, i.e. 1000 feet above terrain. BUT yes ORIT were a *****. only thing worse, Jato assist take-off. Been their, done that, got the tee shirt. Glad its history.
By the way in the sixty's,(my time) hardhat CD flights had you enough fuel to target and approx. halfway back across Atlantic or Pacific. The IF a tanker was available AND had EXTRA JP4 you were permitted to get some!!! Shot your load not CRITICAL anymore!

[wyntrout]

Well, after the BIG ONE, there would be no big hurry to return home. All of the bases and communities would be smoking holes. :( Not much to return to. We knew that... if launched and executed... the mission... everything we left behind would be gone shortly after we got off the ground, if we were lucky. The bases nearer the coast didn't have much time to respond to a first strike... Sea-Launched BMs and cruise missiles. :eek:
The Navy keeps those bad guys from getting as close as they would like.

Wynn:hippie: